Thoughts and Reflections on The Assessment Summit

About The Assessment Summit

The Assessment Summit brought together some of the world’s most accomplished learning experts to share a smorgasbord of practical, actionable advice on assessment – and about 80% of the speakers have previously been on the podcast.

Key takeaways:

• Why do people have such negative associations with assessment? Paul Kearney, Enterprising Education Specialist at Enterprise Design Consultancy presented an interesting talk on ‘The Myths Of Assessment’, and he reflected on why so many people have had bad experiences, through exams, etc. As L&D experts, we need to shift our thinking about this term – it’s about feedback and moving forward.
• Assessment design. Often in our practices multiple choice questions are our default as a type of assessment tool and strategy. Jenny Saucerman, Online Learning Instructional Design Manager at Credit Union National Association demonstrated how scenario questions are a great way to predict someone's future performance. We also learnt about VR assessment tools and embracing that assessment happens over time.
• Assessment in the creative industries. Learning is quite often the process of solving a problem, and the evidence to the solution then becomes the assessment. It’s about not giving the answers, but delivering collaborative approaches and peer work assessment.
• Digital Assessment. Cheryle Walker, Founder, Innovator, Consultant and Facilitator at Learn LIVE Online touched on some technical considerations such as running verifiable virtual assessments. Dan McFadyen, MD at Edalex, spoke about using micro credentials as a way to connect, recognise and uncover skills. It was also fascinating to learn more about the rich source of data you can obtain from assessments, which Bikram Kawan, Software Engineer at Sprout Labs delved into.

Chapters:

• (00:00:00) introduction.
• (00:02:16) Why so many of us associate ‘assessment’ with fear.
• (00:04:17) Measuring the impact of our work.
• (00:06:12) Assessment design.
• (00:09:07) Using VR.
• (00:11:18) The role of assessment in creative industries.
• (00:15:28) The opportunities and challenges that come with digital assessment.
• (00:17:06) Leveraging from your rich sources of data.

Links from the podcast:

Access all talks from The Assessment Summit